And just in the last few weeks, Hamas came around to acknowledging the possibility of a two-state solution.

Then, provoked by Israeli killings of civilians in Gaza and ongoing Israeli assassinations, Hamas and other Palestinian groups responded in kind. They launched rockets into Israel, kidnapped and executed a settler, and burrowed into Israel to kill two Israeli soldiers and hold another one captive, Gilad Shalit.

The taking of captives is an act of barbarism, and the execution of the settler was grotesque.

And these actions played right into Israeli hands, for the Israeli government doesn’t want to negotiate with Hamas. It doesn’t want a decent and just and fair resolution to the conflict. Every time Palestinians move a step closer, Israel slaps them back farther.

And so Israel seized on these latest actions to show the Palestinians who’s boss and to further derail any hopes for a negotiated peace.

Israeli forces detained eight members of the Palestinian cabinet and a couple of dozen members of the Palestinian parliament. On Sunday, the Israeli air force attacked the office of the Palestinian prime minister. All of these action were Israel’s subtle way of saying you’re not even close to being an independent country.

A public health and humanitarian disaster is facing the Gaza Strip, said Dr. Moustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Water supplies and the sewage system have been critically affected, he said on June 30.

“The wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and property and the disproportionate restrictions imposed on civilians by Israeli forces amount to collective punishment on the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing protected persons for offences they have not committed,” said Amnesty International, which also denounced the hostage-taking by the Palestinians.

If you read the press coverage in the United States, you get a misleading idea about the balance of violence. But, as Amnesty International notes, “Since the beginning of this year, Israeli forces have killed some 150 Palestinians, including some 25 children, and Palestinian armed groups have killed close to 20 Israelis, including two children.”

None of those Israelis, none of those Palestinians, none of those children should have died.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government, Israel’s chief sponsor (to the tune of more than $3 billion in aide a year), does nothing except to give Israel a wink and a nod.
“Let the Palestinians sweat a little,” one U.S. aide told the Israeli paper Haaretz.

Israel’s policy of collective punishment is reprehensible.

So, too, is U.S. support for it.

And they are both shortsighted, besides.

They don’t make Israel any safer. Quite the contrary. They stir up hatred in Gaza and on the West Bank.

And they further sully the reputation of the United States in the Arab and Muslim world.

Wake up and smell the Mediterranean coffee.

It’s time for peace—not more bullying, not more bloodshed, not more collective punishment.

By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).